The Digital Television Transition and Public Safety Act of 2005 is a United States Congress legislation enacted on October 20, 2005. This act deals with the cessation of the broadcasting of analog television and the subsequent implementation of digital television. This transition took place on June 12, 2009, which had been scheduled for February 17, 2009. [1] [2]
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The act was a part of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (S.1932), Title III. It also provided for an auction of the recovered frequencies, and for a sum of $7.3 billion to be transferred to the U.S. Treasury from the money received. [3]
Each American household was able to request up to two coupons worth $40 to facilitate the purchase of digital-analog converter boxes. [4] These requests for coupons could be submitted between the dates January 1, 2008 and March 31, 2009, inclusive. [5]
A broadcast flag is a bit field sent in the data stream of a digital television program that indicates whether or not the data stream can be recorded, or if there are any restrictions on recorded content. Possible restrictions include the inability to save an unencrypted digital program to a hard disk or other non-volatile storage, inability to make secondary copies of recorded content, forceful reduction of quality when recording, and inability to skip over commercials.
Digital terrestrial television is a technology for terrestrial television in which land-based (terrestrial) television stations broadcast television content by radio waves to televisions in consumers' residences in a digital format. DTTV is a major technological advance over the previous analog television, and has largely replaced analog which had been in common use since the middle of the 20th century. Test broadcasts began in 1998 with the changeover to DTTV beginning in 2006 and is now complete in many countries. The advantages of digital terrestrial television are similar to those obtained by digitising platforms such as cable TV, satellite, and telecommunications: more efficient use of limited radio spectrum bandwidth, provision of more television channels than analog, better quality images, and potentially lower operating costs for broadcasters.
The All-Channel Receiver Act of 1962 (ACRA), commonly known as the All-Channels Act, was passed by the United States Congress in 1961, to allow the Federal Communications Commission to require that all television set manufacturers must include UHF tuners, so that new UHF-band TV stations could be received by the public. This was a problem at the time since most affiliated stations of the Big Three television networks were well-established on VHF, while many local-only stations on UHF were struggling for survival.
Twin Cities PBS is a non-profit organization based in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States, that operates the Twin Cities' two Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television stations, KTCA-TV and KTCI-TV, both licensed to Saint Paul. It produces programs for local, regional and national television broadcast, operates numerous websites, and produces rich media content for Web distribution.
Alabama Public Television (APT) is a state network of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television stations serving the U.S. state of Alabama. It is operated by the Alabama Educational Television Commission (AETC), an agency of the Alabama state government which holds the licenses for all of the PBS member stations licensed in the state. The broadcast signals of the nine stations cover almost all of the state, as well as parts of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee. The network produces public affairs and documentary programming; broadcast and online education programs for classroom use and teacher professional development; and electronic field trips serving K-12 students.
Rocky Mountain PBS is a state network of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television stations serving the U.S. state of Colorado. It is operated by Rocky Mountain Public Media, Inc., a non-profit organization which holds the licenses for most of the PBS member stations licensed in the state, with the exception of KBDI-TV in Broomfield, which serves as the Denver market's secondary PBS station through the network's Program Differentiation Plan. The network comprises five full-power stations—flagship station KRMA-TV in Denver and satellites KTSC in Pueblo, KRMJ in Grand Junction, KRMU in Durango and KRMZ in Steamboat Springs. The broadcast signals of the five full-power stations and 60 translators cover almost all of the state, as well as parts of Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska and New Mexico.
Louisiana Public Broadcasting (LPB) is a state network of Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) member television stations serving the U.S. state of Louisiana. The stations are operated by the Louisiana Educational Television Authority, an agency created by the executive department of the Louisiana state government which holds the licenses for six of the seven PBS member stations licensed in the state. Louisiana Public Broadcasting's studio facilities and offices are located on Perkins Road in Baton Rouge.
WVAH-TV is a television station licensed to Charleston, West Virginia, United States, serving the Charleston–Huntington market as an affiliate of the digital multicast network Decades. It is owned by Cunningham Broadcasting, which maintains a local marketing agreement (LMA) with Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of dual ABC/Fox affiliate WCHS-TV, for the provision of certain services. However, Sinclair effectively owns WVAH-TV as the majority of Cunningham's stock is owned by the family of deceased group founder Julian Smith. Both stations share studios on Piedmont Road in Charleston, while WVAH-TV's transmitter is located atop Coal Mountain, south of Scott Depot, West Virginia.
The United States The Digital Transition Content Security Act was a bill introduced by House Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican, on December 16, 2005. The bill was backed by Democratic Rep. John Conyers.
An ATSCtuner, often called an ATSC receiver or HDTV tuner, is a type of television tuner that allows reception of digital television (DTV) television channels that use ATSC standards, as transmitted by television stations in North America, parts of Central America, and South Korea. Such tuners are usually integrated into a television set, VCR, digital video recorder (DVR), or set-top box which provides audio/video output connectors of various types.
The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 is a United States Act of Congress concerning the federal budget that became law in 2006.
Mississippi Public Broadcasting (MPB) is the public broadcasting state network serving the U.S. state of Mississippi. It is owned by the Mississippi Authority for Educational Television (MAET), an agency of the state government that holds the licenses for all of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and National Public Radio (NPR) member stations in the state. MPB's headquarters is located on Ridgewood Road in northeast Jackson.
WXXI-TV is a PBS member television station in Rochester, New York, United States. It is owned by the WXXI Public Broadcasting Council alongside NPR members WXXI and WXXI-FM (91.5). The three outlets share studios at 280 State Street near downtown Rochester; WXXI-TV's transmitter is located on Pinnacle Hill on the border between Rochester and Brighton.
A digital television adapter (DTA), commonly known as a converter box or decoder box, is a television tuner that receives a digital television (DTV) transmission, and converts the digital signal into an analog signal that can be received and displayed on an analog television set. Some also have an HDMI output since some TVs with HDMI do not have a digital tuner. The input digital signal may be over-the-air terrestrial television signals received by a television antenna, or signals from a digital cable system. It normally does not refer to satellite TV, which has always required a set-top box either to operate the big satellite dish, or to be the integrated receiver/decoder (IRD) in the case of direct-broadcast satellites (DBS).
A coupon-eligible converter box (CECB) was a digital television adapter that met eligibility specifications for subsidy "coupons" from the United States government. The subsidy program was enacted to provide terrestrial television viewers with an affordable way to continue receiving free digital terrestrial television services after the nation's television service transitioned to digital transmission and analog transmissions ceased. The specification was developed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), with input from the broadcast and consumer electronics industries as well as public interest groups.
In the United States, digital television broadcasts, or DTV, can be received via cable, via internet, via satellite, or via digital terrestrial television — much like analog television broadcasts have been. Full-power analog television broadcasts, however, were required by U.S. federal law to cease by June 12, 2009. Low-power and TV Translator stations were required to cease analog broadcasts on July 13, 2021, with Class A analog stations signing off on September 1, 2015. Also by law, digital broadcasts — when transmitted as over-the-air signals — must conform to ATSC standards. It is unclear whether satellite operators are free to use their own proprietary standards; and many standards exist for Internet television.
Analog passthrough is a feature found on some digital-to-analog television converter boxes. Boxes without analog passthrough only allow digital TV to be viewed on older, analog-only TVs. Those with analog passthrough allow both digital and analog television to be viewed on older TVs.
The digital transition in the United States is the switchover from analog to exclusively digital broadcasting of terrestrial television programming. According to David Rehr, then president and CEO of the National Association of Broadcasters, this transition represented "the most significant advancement of television technology since color TV was introduced." For full-power TV stations, the transition went into effect on June 12, 2009, with stations ending regular programming on their analog signals no later than 11:59 p.m. local time that day.
The Short-term Analog Flash and Emergency Readiness Act, or SAFER Act, is a U.S. law that required the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to allow the continuation of full-power analog TV transmissions in 2009 for an additional 30 days for the purpose of broadcasting public service announcements regarding the DTV transition in the United States and emergency information. It is also commonly known as the "DTV nightlight bill" or "analog nightlight", referring to a small nightlight that is left on after all of the other lights are out. Despite the analog shutoff deadline being extended to June 12, 2009 as part of the DTV Delay Act, stations that signed off before the deadline were still permitted to participate in the SAFER Act.
The digital television transition in Japan (アナログ放送終了) was the mandatory switchover from analog to digital terrestrial television broadcasting that began in 2008 and continued through early 2012. The switchover itself took place between 24 July 2011 and 31 March 2012, and involved television stations across all five major commercial networks, the entire network of NHK's broadcast transmitters, and television stations that are part of the JAITS group. Japan was the first country in eastern Asia to cease broadcasting television signals in analog.